TomFlannery.com

It’s getting to be that time when we sum things up. The year in review as it were. And…well…I’m not really feeling it. I’m tired and I’m cranky and I’m wearing the same clothes every day and everything is getting worse instead of better. Even Christmas is taking it up the ass, as there’s some sort of freak biblical storm heading our way, promising to flood us all out and then huff and puff and blow our houses down and then turn everything into a sheet of Covid-y ice because of course it is. I’m half expecting a forecast of flowing lava for New Year’s Eve.

2020 has been a dumpster fire, and re-living it, even for a few paragraphs, seems a bit masochistic. But as an OCD writer (are there other kinds?)…..blank space must be filled or angels lose their wings.

We begin our story in March. I’m sure January and February were fine.

Rumblings of a virus. In China. It already had a name. Covid-19.

It seemed a world away. What happens in China stays in China….that was the thinking. In short, nobody really gave a fiddler’s fart. The President, when asked, just assured us that our nation, under a red white and blue God, was immune to such shithole country shenanigans. So we went about our business, eating and drinking and being merry until the Scranton St. Patrick’s Day Parade was cancelled. Wait, what?

Finally, we started paying attention.

To gather in large numbers was now Russian roulette. People were actually dying of this thing, whatever it was. Apparently it was passed through droplets from the mouth and nose, and when some innocently suggested wearing masks, they were laughed out of the crowded bar. So, no masks. Got it. The President was asked again. He called it a “hoax”, without bothering to explain the increasing body count.

All our gigs were cancelled. We actually played a show on Sunday, March 15th, which was parade weekend. Rumors were that the governor was gonna shut it all down…..and there was a melancholy sense that this was gonna be the last time we were allowed to do this for a while. If I remember right, we lingered longer than usual after the show, nursing our beers and trying not to talk about what everybody was thinking. Then we all went home and stayed there. Overnight the streets were empty.

Everybody started talking about something called “Zoom” and we all did the best we could to remain connected. And then Tom Hanks and his wife tested positive, and then John Prine died. I took long walks around town at all hours. It didn’t matter. The streets were empty regardless. The fear was palpable. A new phrase become household. “Flattening the curve”. If we all hung together, it would take a few weeks. And then this thing might go away. Whatever it was. And weeks went by and there was no flattening of anything, and everybody started getting a little frantic. Businesses were closed. Now what? Teenagers making minimum wage literally risked their own lives checking the rest of us out in grocery store lines, and it was only in retrospect that people began to comment on how fucked up that was. The President downplayed the entire thing. NYC was running out of ventilators and Andrew Cuomo was becoming must see TV. PPE was a new acronym for most of us, and then we learned that we didn’t even have enough of that. Apparently there has been a pandemic response team that might have mitigated such things, but they had been fired. Trump went on TV and told lies and suggested we inject bleach, and then on the weekends he’d golf, which probably saved lives because at least then he wasn’t suggesting….you know…..that we inject bleach.

“Social Distancing” became a thing. Everybody knew this meant staying 6 feet apart, but try that in a Wal-Mart food aisle and see how you make out. Masks were in vogue again, except for the incels and Karen’s who were more and more convinced that Trump was saving us all from all those liberal pedophiles hanging out in the basement of pizza parlors. Grandma was expendable because “muh raats”……and seemingly every day a new video was making the rounds on social media of crazed maskless white people screeching at hapless teens just trying to do their jobs.

In the midst of all this came more black men and women being killed by cops, and protests erupted nationwide. It was a long, hot summer. The virus spread like rage.

Trump set a good example by holding large, maskless, un-socially distanced pep-rallies. Eventually he got sick himself, and was helicoptered from the White House to the hospital where he had 20 private doctors who pumped him with $100k worth of drugs not available to the unwashed, and this morbidly obese 74 year old junk-food addict got all better in 2 days and told all the dying people that there was nothing to be afraid of if you were just a manly man like him.

It was madness all around.

We were warned of a second wave…..that it would be much worse than the first. And then it was upon us and was much worse than the first and everybody seemed shocked. All my Trumper friends said that all of this would mysteriously “go away” the day after the election and yet here we are, re-locked down with 3000+ dying every single day……watching hoaxers Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio get vaccinated before front line nurses, awaiting the scraps from the tables of the millionaires we keep voting into office to fall on the floor so we can kick each other in the teeth fighting over them.

Meanwhile New Zealand is 100% virus free.

Our President has failed us. Congress has failed us. The Senate has failed us. We’ve failed each other.

Hate flows unvexed to the sea.

2020. Piss off.

In a bit…

–tf

It’s all a bit surreal out there. News of a massive, unprecedented Russian cyber attack has dropped….like snow landing on warm ground. Nobody is quite sure what it all means, or what damage may already be done, and most don’t really seem to give a shit. It’s been likened to Russian fighter planes trolling US air space, but our President hasn’t mentioned it at all. He hasn’t mentioned a lot of things lately, but one might expect this would focus him long enough to compose a tweet at least. Apparently he’s too busy chaining himself to the bed, daring the deep state, which now includes Mitch McConnell, Geraldo Rivera, and the Supreme Court, to remove him. We live in strange times, Bubba. I can’t wait to read all the books.

A Covid relief package may or may not hit before the end of the year….and it may or may not include stimulus checks…….laughingly small but they might buy two week’s rent and a case of beer. Washington remains stunningly out of touch with the struggles of average Americans, who are drowning in a system that hasn’t “trickled-down” since that stupid fucking term was invented. People ordered not to work are given nothing. Covid numbers rage out of control. Three thousand plus are dying every day, while the Wal-Marts and shopping malls are filled to the brim, 50% occupancy and social distancing be damned. But at least you can’t grab a beer at Joe’s Corner Bar, so there’s that. We just got walloped by a historic blizzard, because of course we did. There is talk of another government shutdown (although I’m not sure how we’d be able to tell). There’s a vaccine, but no solid time-line on when it will be available to all. Considering how bad our government fucked up covid testing, it’s hard to believe distribution of a life saving vaccine isn’t gonna turn into a massive bureaucratic shitshow. Disinformation from anti-vaxxers is already rampant, and the usual stupids are gobbling it up like oxy from a pill mill. This vaccine will give the Klan a chance to pivot away from getting all jizzy about not wearing masks and instead turn them all into Jenny McCarthy. I can’t wait.

Christmas is a week away. How is this possible? Since March time has ebbed and flowed……we’d forget what day it is, sleep cycles were decimated……it suddenly seemed dark 20 hours a day. If lucky enough to work remotely, we’d log on early, or late, or somewhere in between, somehow covering portions of all 3 shifts at the same time. Wide awake at 3am, standing on the porch watching the stars and listening to the silence. Staying up all night. Or sleeping all day. Staying connected somehow…..Facetime or Zoom or just a social media post saying “is there anybody out there?” Music and Netflix and Middleswarth BBQ with lager chasers and trying to tamp down the paranoia when you started coughing or feeling something else vaguely Covid-y. Friday didn’t feel like Friday anymore. The weekend didn’t feel like the weekend. Even Monday got lost in a depressive cycle. It’s been a week of Monday’s since March. I guess this is all what a wardrobe of hoodies and pajama pants does to the mind. Merry Christmas!

Because 2020 has sucked so hard, you’d have to be a monster to think that 2021 isn’t going to bring some improvement. So we’ll virtually gather on New Year’s Eve and suffer through Ryan Seacrest and horrible lip syncing and watch the ball drop and expect that this is the start of a less shitty world because we’re adorably optimistic, especially when we’re drunk as monkeys.

And then we’ll awake to 3000+ more dead, and more crowded stores and more lies and more disinformation and the dumb people will still be dumb and the scientists will still be ignored and Trump will still be mad-tweeting while tied to the bed and this will go on and on until the economy collapses in a cacophony of one final greed-induced screech by savage un-empathetic rich white men. Or, you know, maybe things really will get better with the vaccine in place. I mean, anything is possible. But I’m an irish catholic, so I always expect and plan for the worst because it saves tons of time.

But I’ve been wrong before so…..

Stay safe out there my friends. What I want more than anything else is to gather and hug and raise glasses with you all. Many glasses. Many hugs.

In a bit..

–tf

There’s a storm a-comin’.

I think anyway. It’s been all over the news that we’re about to be pulverized by the Winter Warlock, anywhere from 4 inches to 24 inches (depending on who you ask and how prone to exaggeration your Facebook friends are), which seems like a lot of wiggle room for the weather peeps but whatever. To prepare I made sure that our snow blower is still broken (it is), and dug out some old shovels from the basement. I fully intend to wage relentless war against this thing by shoveling and re-shoveling every hour if need be, through the night if I have to (I’ll sleep when I’m dead, and my driveway is cleared off), anything to prevent that insane knee-high morning-after mess that awaits those not as OCD as I am. My kids will laugh at me the entire time, but it will all be worth it. I think.

That’s the kind of snow that’s so heavy that it feels like you’re in the Mount Everest Death Zone moving it. A few feet then you have to stop and gulp for air and watch all the plow trucks go past your house building that ice wall at the end of your driveway ever higher. It doesn’t matter how many times I clear the driveway….as I’m convinced there’s a drone somewhere pin-pointing my location for the trucks to immediately plow me back in again. And when they plow the driveway in, they completely bury the mail box, so that needs to be re-opened as well. The mail folks…..I’m sure this is just what they need at this point in their turned-upside-down-7-days-a-week-16-hour-a-day lives…..a route full of buried mailboxes with their trucks filled with a 100% increase in Amazon Prime packages.

There will also be 2 cars in said driveway….so I’ll have to be relentless in clearing them off….then moving them from side to side, and then back again. It’s all planned in my head, like a military operation. My plan will go awry of course….within minutes…..and depending on how long my paper-mache back holds out.

You have to choose the proper clothes. Pajama pants work well with boots (I’m assuming you’ve been wearing them exclusively since March anyway….so a no-brainer). They are quick to dry off once you’ve completed your round. A hoodie with a scarf for the face (and aren’t we all used to this already anyway?) and a good ski jacket. A good skull cap is a must…..gotta keep the head warm, especially if the wind is howling, which is what they’re calling for. If you’ve got a fire place, fire it up. You can dump your gear in front of it to dry between outings. After the initial cleaning, you should plan on 15 minutes on, and 45 minutes off. Until the snow stops. You can doze on the couch but always have your phone alarm set.

(Remember, there’s nothing normal about any of this. This is strictly OCD behavior talking, so if that’s not your thing feel free to move along.)

Of course, the last time they called for “flurries” we got dumped on, so now that they’re calling for us to get dumped on it’s possible this is all just an elaborate ruse, but they seem deadly earnest this time, and have seen fit to share all sorts of official looking graphics showing the path of the storm and the snow totals, using pretty colors and interactive maps. It’s national news…..so there has to be shoveling or they will be buried in an avalanche of social media ridicule.

I don’t know if there is any such thing as a “snow day” anymore. It seems pretty quaint in 2020, as we all sit in front of Zoom screens in our pajama pants and lose track of what day it is. A pity that kids may not be let loose to lay their burdens down for a bit and roll on the white stuff…..then inside for some hot chocolate topped with marshmallows, and then back out again, in a loop until the darkness falls and the red-cheeks are returned to normal by the cool side of the pillow. As kids we used to look forward to winter storms….and now it just seems like Mother Nature made it to the front of the line and has her chance to drill us with another unwanted 2020 face tattoo.

But she ain’t gonna win. I’m gonna be down to the pavement by Thursday morning. Who’s with me?

In a bit…

–tf

Depression is a real thing. I can’t define it but I know it when it arrives. And sometimes it gets its hooks into you and does strange things. It fires all the wrong synapses and all you’re left with is the feeling that you’ve fallen and you’re not so sure you want to get up. Sleep is more of a refuge than a comfort, but no matter how many hours you pour on…it never seems to touch the tired spot. The seasonal blues is normal enough, but in the midst of a crippling pandemic, it’s like it’s been given a dose of steroids. It gets dark so early, and you can find yourself actually looking forward to the sun going down. It’s less competition. It levels the playing field.

We’re not built for all this…..this enforced isolation. The only thing still on the same schedule are the bills that arrive, pandemic be damned. All the worry. What if this? What if that? What if I lose this? How am I going to pay that? There’s no help. There’s no cavalry. There’s no safety net. There’s no leadership. It’s the privilege we were born into, and then just blind luck. Some will make it. Some won’t. Burdens shared are burdens lighted. But we can’t share. It’s reckless to share. We need to hold. And be held. And that’s not allowed. We know what we need to do but half won’t do it. We know what we want, but can’t get there until everybody pulls in the same direction.

Imagine living along the coast during World War II and being asked to turn off your house lights at night so that lights on shore would not help the German U-boats find their way in the darkness, and saying “Fuck you, I’m keeping my lights on because my rights…..”.

That’s where we are.

Until this monstrously selfish behavior ends …..it’s a 9/11 every day. And soon it will be an Antietam every day. It’s appalling and sad.

There’s always somebody worse off than you. If you have food and shelter, and the bank isn’t threatening you, you’re near the front of the line. If you’ve remained untouched by this virus, you are fortunate. The numbers are terrifying, and there doesn’t seem to be any plan to get them under control. Since March, the selfish gene has gone viral. No amount of crippled ICUs or dead bodies can dent the mask-less heads of those who can only feel the lash on their own backs. If anything, the worse it gets, the less empathy we see. We only seem to double down on cruelty. Yesterday the Governor of PA announced he tested positive for COVID-19, and within 15 minutes I was reading posts from “Friends” wishing him a speedy death. This is not the same country in which I was born. It’s out of this poison soil that depression grows, and spreads. It’s watered by ignorance.

We all have ways of trying to cope. Reading or writing or exercising or eating and drinking or staring at Netflix like a stoned Elvis (hopefully unarmed for the TV’s sake). For those lucky enough to be working…..it’s wake up in the dark and come home in the dark, dodging freak snowstorms and black ice. Trips to the grocery store and booze runs with just enough on the debit card to get you in and out. Watch over the kids like paranoid lunatics, maybe bring a Spotify playlist for a ride through your childhood, remembering distant memories and recalling other names. Leaving the house and then coming right back because we forgot our masks. Some things will never be normal.

Everybody says they understand. But they don’t. Everybody says “I’m here if you want to talk” but what are you gonna say? You can’t talk about depression without sounding whiny, which is why nobody talks about it. So you wait it out. And you hope for a better tomorrow. But these days? It’s hard to hope for that when you don’t know if it’s Wednesday or Thursday.

I don’t remember what “normal” felt like, so if we do get back to it I’m sure I won’t notice.

It looks like another shutdown is coming. The screeching will commence….but for the most part it’s the screechers who have got us here, by thinking of nobody but themselves. The longer they fight this, the longer and darker this winter is going to be. It should be over now. Like it is in most nations on earth. Americans seem perversely willing to walk across dead bodies to preserve their right not to sacrifice to keep the pile from growing.

I don’t know what comes next. I’m tired. And I’ve been lucky. Extraordinarily lucky. And still, it gets hold of me. And won’t let go. It’s all too real.

I feel for everybody. Please take care of yourselves so we can soon get back to taking care of each other.

In a bit..

–tf

I was 14 years old when we lost John Lennon. It was a senseless act of violence…….perpetrated by a nobody. I’ve tried to forget the killer’s name. Some religious zealot with a broken brain and a hard-on for JD Salinger.

Howard Cosell told me, and told the world. In the middle of the Monday Night Football broadcast. It didn’t seem real. It still doesn’t seem real. I don’t remember if I cried or not. I was alone upstairs, watching the game on my parent’s color TV in their bedroom. They placed it on top of a tall dresser, so I would watch it standing up to get the best view. All I can recall is being sort of frozen in place. I must have yelled out to my sisters or my parents. I’m sure I was the one who broke it to them. Cosell scooped the world.

The Beatles weren’t even out of their 20s when they called it quits. My introduction to their music came from the usual places. Big brothers and big sisters and the radio. These songs would not go away. One of my earliest Christmas memories was finding the famous “red” double album of their early work under the tree. I had a high fever and was shivering on the couch, but underneath my blankets I clutched the record, and spinning it on the turntable burned my fever away.

I knew nothing then of Paul and Linda and John and Yoko or Apple record lawsuit chaos. The Beatles were gone already, in my mind they were old and retired. Every once in a while one of them might release a Christmas song or something. I didn’t have a favorite Beatle. I kinda agreed with George Harrison who when asked how many Beatles did it take to change a light-bulb answered “four”. John sang some and Paul sang some and George sang some and even Ringo got to belt out “Octopus’s Garden” and “With a Little Help From My Friends”. Why choose sides when you’re surrounded by friends?

So I was shocked to be reminded that Lennon was 40.

That sounded crazy to me. That was like….almost as old as my Dad.

John Lennon had been frozen in time……a perpetual mop-top who rebelled with the help of psychedelics and granny glasses. The ride from screeching “Twist and Shout” with a mouthful of lozenges to asking the rich royals to “rattle yer jewelry” to donning Yoko’s fur coat on the Apple roof seemed like a million miles, but it was actually a mad sprint that took place in a few short years. And in our heads he was now on Mount Rushmore, and the legend had begun to take over. It was easy to forget he was a newly committed husband and a proud father and still too young for grey hair. At 14, 40 sounded like an eternity. Today, I can’t remember that far backwards. John Lennon had half a life in front of him, and suddenly 40 wasn’t old anymore. It was heartrendingly, tragically young.

The details were sickening. He was executed, essentially. Four bullets in the back. In front of his wife. From a guy who asked for and graciously received an autograph a few hours earlier. Lennon’s blood-splattered glasses became a ghastly, iconic symbol of the relentless gun violence that only seemed to happen here. Vigils popped up around the world. Everybody with candles, singing “All You Need is Love” and “Give Peace a Chance”, gathering for the type of communal hug that, ironically, we all desperately need right now.

For my generation, this was our JFK moment. This was when time stood still, and when the date rolls around every year we get goosebumps.

Like JFK, Lennon was a giant of a man with giant flaws who nonetheless always fought to bend that arc towards justice. They were fearless and feared. They were saints, and they were sinners. They led from the front.

Oh the things he might have gotten up to if he lived. After years of silence, he was making music again. He was in a good place. I can’t help but think of him surrounding himself with younger musicians, the kind that would push him down the roads he hadn’t already traveled. He might have re-made the 1980s. We’ll never know. He and Paul might have pulled out the acoustic guitars and sat knee-to-knee one more time and created one last bit of magic together, just for the crack. Or he might have sat back with his son, and watched the wheels.

He might have changed the world even more than he changed the world.

In a bit..

–tf

Spotify is sending users their stats for the year…what we’ve been listening to and how often and for how long. I expect that during the pandemic the streaming services are booming. It’s unfortunate that this increased usage doesn’t trickle down to the artist, but since it’s 2020 we’re all quite used to being screwed so it’s just another “meh” in a line of “mehs”.

My top artists of the year are a varied lot. The Tragically Hip and Bob Mould and the Drive-By Truckers and Joe Henry and AC/DC and a big Van Halen surge when Eddie passed. I hate myself for supporting greedy devils like Spotify but it’s like a morphine drip and I’m always in pain. Being able to listen to Mozart and then the Menzingers, Beethoven and then the Badlees….and back again without getting out of my chair is obviously addictive. A shelf of disorganized CDs sits to the right of my desk at home, a quaint reminder of the past. In the other room sits my 160 gig Ipod, the Apollo spacecraft of its day, loaded up with over 25,000 songs, pretty much my CD collection digitized. Relics all, replaced in an instant by having the entire musical world on your smart phone for the cost of a 12 pack of PBR a month. It’s utterly insane how much we’ve devalued music. It sucks, but it’s great.

I’m struggling with my own addiction, as you can clearly see. But let’s try to stay positive, shall we?

And these small little blue tooth speakers are just as goofy, throwing sound back in my face with crispness and at a Spinal Tap-ian volume. I don’t know how these little things work, but my old school stereo sits across the room from me covered in dust, flanked by its 2 speakers, each the size of a college dorm-room refrigerator. And I don’t miss it one bit. Well, ok. Maybe I miss it a little. But my blue tooth is a lot easier to drag outside on warm summer nights. And it’s equally capable of annoying the neighbors.

Spotify allows me to soothe my inner geek as well. Always been a sorta-hidden power-pop-punk-emo type, which is kinda weird when my desk is piled with books by and about Woody Guthrie and Joe Strummer, but don’t judge me. I think The Wonder Years “Suburbia I’ve Given You All and Now I’m Nothing” is fucking great and if you don’t agree with me you’re wrong and kinda sad. My nieces and nephews used to be amazed that I had all the same records they did, because I’m really old compared to them, but I’m pretty sure I was blasting New Found Glory records before they were. So there. I adore bands that are melodic and fun and play hard and I don’t care what category somebody puts them in and I don’t care if it’s cool anymore. I’m not that big on the gang vocal thing, but I admit that after about 8 beers it can sound pretty catchy. About 10 years ago my aforementioned nephew got 50 of his buddies to ante up $100 each and they hosted the band Saves the Day for a backyard barbecue and I still haven’t forgiven him for not letting me sneak in.

Remember, you’re only as old (or young) as the music you listen to, which gives you lots of options, no?

So where do we go from here?

I can move on. Or I can stay entrenched.

I can search out the new, or seek shelter in the comfort of old friends.

It’s my own record store, and there’s no categories to plow through. The power-pop is next to the Merle Haggard bin, and the blues is mixed in with the sea shanties. And it’s open 24/7, and it’s even MORE open during pandemics. The doors have been ripped off their hinges, and rocks have been thrown through all the windows.

But still.

I miss unsealing the albums. The liner notes. The anticipation of dropping the needle. The waiting is the hardest part, but can you ever remember it not being worth it? The anticipation. Sometimes waiting in line on release day. You just HAD to have it….it was a point of honor. And you’d watch the record spinning as your listened, hard. If a song skipped, you just grinned and bore it…..the skip became part of the song. Later when you replaced your albums with CDs the song didn’t sound right, because the skip wasn’t there anymore.

It sucks. And it’s great.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

I’ll never make up my mind.

But I’ll never stop listening.

In a bit…

–tf

It’s the holidays. The time of year when folks are usually a little bit nicer. More smiles. More laughs. More time together. The pace slows down a little on the outside. The lights go up. The fences come down. We all long for Whoville. Snoopy comes to town, with Topper and the Warlock and Frosty and Rudolph and we all trust in the magic snowball.

Yea well, that’s not happening this year.

The fear is palpable. You can feel it everywhere. The virus. The rent. Food on the table. What if this? What if that? It’s dark out there…..and the temperatures are dropping. The wind howls and the black ice is around every sharp corner.

And we’re all becoming hypochondriacs. And why not? Coughs, runny noses, fatigue, body aches, fevers, ’tis the season normally. But now there’s an elephant in the room. Should I get tested? Where can I get tested? And since I’m essentially quarantining already, why get tested at all? If I’m positive, then what? All we can really do is hunker down and wait for a vaccine, or more precisely, wait for our government to not completely jack up the distribution of said vaccine. We watch the numbers, rising. Every day. Relentless. It puts a lump in the throat, which re-triggers the paranoia, because maybe lumpy throat is a covid symptom that I wasn’t aware of.

The nation is currently on auto-pilot. President Trump has long since cashed in his casino chips, and has continued to ignore the pandemic entirely, focusing instead on rage-tweeting election lies and raising money from his cult members, presumably to assist him in staying out of prison. In yet another bonk over the head, today Attorney General and Trump ball washer Bill Barr was forced to admit that his office has uncovered zero evidence of election fraud, which if the past is any indication, means he’s about to be fired via a tweet any moment now. I have to admit that this treating Trump like a pinata at a birthday party in lieu of him conceding like an actual adult is fun in a “but it’s still sorta damaging to democracy” kind of way.

As wanton cruelty was the President’s one and only presidential point, this week, as Americans die in record numbers (more Americans died from Covid in November than in Australia, Canada, China, Japan, and Germany combined) from a virus he called first called a hoax and then did nothing to contain even after he contracted it, he’s focused on changing the rules for federal death penalty cases by bringing back firing squads. Yes. FIRING SQUADS. This is truly demented, twisted, despotic stuff. And yet it’s on page 17 of the paper, because his casual brutality has become normalized.

I just went out for a walk, and the weather matches the mood. Alternating between rain and sleet, with biting winds. Everything is dark. Everything is wet. The sun is buried. My shoes were full of mud. It was lunchtime but it felt like the end of a long day. A lot of cars had their lights on. The kind of day that can give any town a bad name. I know this is all temporary, but these days one can be forgiven for throwing in the towel before it’s been handed to him.

Sports was a thing for a while during all this. The NBA and NHL bubbles somehow worked, as did the baseball playoffs. There were some bumps and bruises, but overall the games proved a welcome distraction. Football, on the other hand, which is essentially bubble-proof, is gradually turning into a shit show. College games in the Trumpier areas are being played with tens of thousands of people in the stands….welcome news for an airborne virus. As I type this the Steelers / Ravens have had their scheduled Thanksgiving prime time game re-scheduled 4 times, and it’s now to be played at a most un-football like day and time….Wednesday at 3:40pm. It really has no business being played at all, since the Ravens team is infested with the virus. On Sunday the Denver Broncos were forced to play an actual game that counts using a practice squad wide-receiver at quarterback, which is kinda like the bat-boy pitching a MLB game. This happened because the 3 actual QBs on the Broncos roster gathered and refused to wear masks, and came into direct contact with a positive test. The result was perhaps the worst game in the history of the league. If the NFL was embarrassed by any of this, they got over it once the TV revenue checks cleared. Money, as always, trumps (sorry) everything.

That being said, the mask goes OVER YOUR FUCKING NOSE. I’m not sure what it’s gonna take for folks to grasp this simple concept. Does it need to be engraved on tombstones?

In a bit..

–tf